How to overcome barriers between start-ups and large companies to enhance innovation

Risk exists and, indeed, must exist. Innovation always involves an element of uncertainty and is, to all intents and purposes, a form of business risk. As with many start-ups, business innovation projects may not produce the expected results and should be understood as a natural outcome when trying something new. The problem arises when innovation is treated as an isolated technological project and not as the answer to a concrete business problem, and in recent years this is particularly evident with the spread of artificial intelligence.

One in two companies complain of skills shortages for advanced innovation projects: management problem or organisational culture?

It is a combination of the two. Many companies are only now beginning to develop structured 'innovation management' skills, i.e. the ability to do technology scouting, manage partnerships with start-ups and integrate their solutions into business processes. At the same time, there is an important cultural dimension: innovation requires openness to the outside world and speed in decision-making, and in this process the vision and entrepreneurial spirit of internal 'innovation leaders' are often decisive. When these figures adopt an 'intrapreneur' approach and receive clear support from management, they manage to open up spaces for experimentation and overcome organisational silos, transforming innovation from an exploratory initiative into a concrete lever of competitiveness for the company.

What are the mechanisms to reduce the mismatch between supply and demand for innovation?

First of all, it must be remembered that the mismatch is often created because companies and start-ups move with very different logics: the former seek reliable and scalable solutions that can be integrated into complex systems, while the latter work with rapid and iterative cycles of experimentation. To narrow this gap, it is crucial to start from concrete industrial needs, precisely because the innovation market becomes much more efficient when a company clearly defines what problem it has to solve. Innovation challenges arise from here and start from a precise principle, namely that of transforming an industrial need into a clear and structured demand, to which start-ups and scale-ups can respond with targeted, high-value solutions. Last but not least, the role of ecosystems and platforms capable of translating the language of business into comprehensible technological requirements for innovative realities is very important, facilitating the emergence of pilot projects that allow solutions to be validated.

Platforms like Innovation Match, which you call a 'hybrid ecosystem': is it a replicable model? And how?

The model is replicable through relationship hubs capable of bringing together qualified communities, digital tools and meeting moments, and it is so because it is not simply based on a technological platform, but on an ecosystem logic whose heart is the SME entrepreneur, a naturally pragmatic figure, accustomed to thinking in terms of results and not theory, who for this very reason represents a key player in applied innovation processes. When the centre of the community is composed of figures who have to make operational decisions, the matching of technological demand and supply becomes much more effective. In our case, these ecosystems take shape through physical or digital hubs: in the former case, events such as the Spark! Innovation Summit, where managers, entrepreneurs, companies and start-ups meet and build operational relationships; in the second, the digital dimension is developed from the analysis of companies' needs, which are translated into targeted 'innovation challenges' on vertical areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, manufacturing, HR tech and fintech.

What impact could this model have on the competitiveness of our supply chains in the next three to five years?

The aim is to transform networking into operational ecosystems capable of generating trust, collaboration and concrete industrial projects, creating the conditions for innovation to arise from specific industrial needs. In the medium term, relational infrastructures of this kind can strengthen the competitiveness of Italian supply chains by reducing the time between the discovery of new technologies and their application in companies, thanks to a faster connection between start-ups, research and established companies.

Last question: three principles behind the 'perfect' collaboration between start-ups and large companies

The first is the clarity of the problem to be solved: when a company identifies a precise use case and the start-up can demonstrate its value in that context, collaboration immediately becomes more concrete. The second is the speed of experimentation: rapid pilot projects make it possible to quickly understand whether a solution works without locking the organisation into overly complex processes. The third is the presence of an in-house 'champion' who has the full responsibility and authority to bring the solution into the organisation: without this step, even the best technologies risk getting stuck in the proof-of-concept phase.